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An In-Depth Look At SEO Ranking Factors

Google’s search algorithm famously incorporates hundreds of on- and off-page factors to deliver results to users. This means that optimizing a site for search engines — or the practice of SEO — can be a complicated process.

Whether you’re looking to improve your current site or create an entirely new one, it pays to be aware of the possible SEO ranking factors that affect your chances of being found in search engines. In general, following these three rules of thumb will help improve your site:

Make your website easy for GoogleBot to crawl.

Provide a quality, user-friendly experience to your site visitors.

Avoid any sketchy, corner-cutting deals or strategies.

While these three rules will give you a solid starting point, we’ve gone the extra mile and compiled a complete list of Google SEO ranking factors in 2015. It’s important to note, however, that while Google may go into detail about how GoogleBot reads websites, the company very rarely provides details about the exact ranking factors they use.

As a result, these factors can’t be 100% guaranteed (though they do have data behind them), and they may change without warning. We’ll keep our list up to date to provide you with the most accurate collection of Google SEO ranking factors possible.

Inbound links (also called backlinks) are one of the most important elements of a successful SEO strategy. Links from reputable websites show Google that you’re trusted by other site owners, which will help the linked pages and your overall site rank better in search engine results pages (SERPs). This philosophy was the foundation of Google’s creation in the 1990s, and links still matter today.

A surprise jump in the quantity of links to your website may make Google think you paid or traded for links, which can bring on a penalty. This is also a negative SEO technique that competitors may use to damage your rankings.

Quantity of Links from Individual C-Class IPs

Unique C-class (or C block) IP addresses can show that your links are coming from sources outside of your business, indicating that you have helpful, varied, and accessible information.

Quantity of Links from Same C-Class IPs

Having a ton of links from the same C-class IP address may be a sign of blog network or affiliate linkbuilding, which can result in penalties.

Quantity of Total Linking Pages

When you’re building links, the total number of other pages that link to yours plays a huge part in ranking well.

You and your competitors are always fighting for links. That means links from websites that share real estate with you in SERPs may have a greater impact on your ranking than links from non-competitors.

Links from Bad Neighborhoods

If you get a link from disreputable sites that link to (and receives links from) disreputable sites, Google may associate your domain with poor sources. As a sidenote, you can request to remove these kinds of links with Google’s disavow function.

High Link Percentage from Low-Quality Sites

Receiving lots of low-quality links from blogs, forum profiles, and other common spam accounts may earn a penalty from Google.

Links from Diverse Sources

If you only get your links from one source, those links will likely carry less weight than if you have a varied link profile stretching several industries and fields.

The closer you are to high-authority sites in terms of links, the more TrustRank they pass to you and the better you will rank.

Guest Blog Posts

Guest blogs shouldn’t be used as your sole linkbuilding method, but they can still help your website.

Google uses outbound links as an on-page ranking factor. Similar to citing sources in an academic paper, you should also link to credible sources where appropriate on your website. The more credible, authoritative, and important the sources are, the better Google will rank your page. Just don’t overdo it or Google may think you’re spamming!

Outbound Link Quality

If you link to credible sources, including those that have high authority, .edu or .gov TLDs, and similar subject matter, Google may be able to better contextualize and rank your page.

“Cloaking” is the process by which webmasters list a website under one context and then redirect a user somewhere else after a click. It’s a surefire way to get on Google’s bad side and even de-indexed.

Affiliate Links

If you partner (or affiliate) with other properties and you link lots of them together to gain credibility, Google may penalize you.

Anchor text refers to the text you use when linking to another site. The more descriptive and concise you can be, the better the link will appear. However, Google’s crawler can also infer context based on the words around anchor text. That means that links to your site aren’t the only factor impacting your ranking — it’s also the words the link uses.

Context of Anchor Text

Google has a patent to read context for links. While it’s unconfirmed whether it’s active, this mechanism may send significant relevancy signals to Google’s crawlers.

Sentiment around Anchor Text

Whether someone is linking to you because they like you or hate you is evident in what they write, and Google can possibly now gauge sentiment.

The strength of your domain is a powerful SEO ranking factor. Essentially, your domain as a whole is considered when users enter search queries that relate to your website. The more credibility you’ve built through both on- and off-page factors, the more Google will prefer your domain.

Public WhoIs can help keep your site in good standing. And although it hasn’t been addressed since Pubcon 2006, Matt Cutts said private WhoIs isn’t necessarily bad, but it can raise some eyebrows in conjunction with negative factors.

“Contact Us” Pages

A “contact us” page may help a domain rank locally since it lists your name, address, and phone number — three of the most valuable ranking factors in local SEO.

Microformat Support

It’s possible that pages with microformat support rank better than those without support.

Site SEO ranking factors are all concerned with the elements that you have site-wide. This largely includes categories like infrastructure, stability, reliability, and more. If you want to maintain a strong position in SERPs, you have to make sure your site operates like a well-oiled machine.

Almost everything you add onto a page can influence Google’s perception of it, and following their recommended guidelines makes it easier for their bots to crawl your pages to find the information they need. The more thorough you are with your page construction, the more likely your page will rank well against your competition.

If most of your users click a link to one of your pages and then leave right away (causing a “bounce”), Google may view the page as low-quality and demote it in SERPs.

Content is king, and content is a valuable addition to any digital marketing strategy. These SEO ranking factors can also be some of the most fun to optimize since they give bloggers, designers, and other content creators the chance to discuss personal passions, related news, and more. If you produce content that is made for search engine users and provides them with a quality experience, Google will like you more.

Content Length

The length of content you have on a page reflects an attention to detail and quality, as opposed to shorter, less helpful alternatives.

Grammar and Spelling

While their importance has yet to be determined in terms of ranking, proper grammar and spelling can at least help match keywords to user searches and show site visitors that you’re professional.

Reading Level

Writing on a higher reading level may help establish you as a reliable authority on certain topics, though it’s important to also keep the tone conversational and accessible for your target demographic.

Relevant Terms

Semantics are important, and if you use a variety of terms related to the keyword you want to rank for (instead of just repeating the keyword itself), your ranking may increase.

Quality and Usefulness

Useful content may rank better than other content since it provides a better user experience for searchers and entices links.

If you’re going to make a big change to a trusted page, it’s best to delete as little traffic- and conversion-oriented text as possible while adding more quality, in-depth text. Deleting large sections of valuable content can make you lose rank on SERPs since you’ll lose keywords, word count, and quality.

Frequency of Content Changes

If you update your blog regularly, Google will more frequently index your site to look for changes, increasing the number of pages you can have on SERPs.

Google may view the quantity of comments on a blog or article as an indication of its worth and engagement.

If you want your site to show up in the results for searches related to your business, you have to use keywords. These are the words that Google users type into the search bar to find what they want. In general, targeting your pages to certain keywords is a great idea. But, as with other forms of optimization, just make sure you don’t overdo it.

If all of a site’s keywords have a high organic CTR, Google may view your site as quality.

The jury is still out for a lot of social media SEO ranking factors. They’re some of the newest ranking factors incorporated into Google’s search algorithm, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use these social media strategies to your advantage. While the direct impact they have on SEO is minimal, the idea is that social media makes your company accessible — and Google likes accessible companies.

As a site owner, some SEO ranking factors are simply out of your control. This is because Google works for individual users, to the point where they request volunteer feedback and employees who specialize in usability. That means that your site, even though you’ve worked hard to show up in Google’s search results, may not display at all depending on the data Google has extracted from certain users. Some of them may see different results from users who aren’t logged into Google properties, and others may use Google properties so much that their search results are customized to their interests. These factors make SEO a little tricky.

Query Timeliness

Google loves displaying timely results to the point where they might start showing tweets in users’ search results for time-sensitive queries like news. This would remove valuable real estate from SERPs and push your listing further down the page.

SERP Diversity

Google may attempt to show results that include diverse, high-quality results, as opposed to pages from the same domain, depending on user queries.

If a user enters a query for a specific brand, Google will show results for it first, even if you rank for keywords that are similar.

It’s important to remember that when it comes to SEO, we’re working in Google’s world. They can introduce updates and algorithm changes at any point, even temporary adjustments that can impact SERPs for a brief amount of time. These are a few of the different features Google uses in its algorithm and on its SERPs that can change a page’s ability to rank.

“Google Dance”

“Google Dance” is the unofficial term for sudden, short-lived changes in SERP rankings. It’s not an actual Google property, but it’s suspected that Google shuffles ranking criteria to check for domains that use black hat strategies.

Google Webmaster Tools Warning

Google will notify site owners about unnatural links. Typically, the owner’s site will drop in rank until the problem is addressed.

Google Sandbox

Google’s sandbox is used for new sites that receive an unnatural amount of links after their creation, which could be indicative of link schemes. Google limits the visibility of these domains on SERPs in spite of their apparent popularity.

Filing a reconsideration request allows Google to re-examine your site and determine whether or not to remove a penalty.

With hundreds of factors playing into the search results for every query, it’s critical to carefully comb through your site to check for any elements that may not be optimized or — worse — lead to a penalty.

As SEOs, we may not have definitive confirmation from Google that these are the exact factors they use, but it’s the most comprehensive list of SEO ranking factors we have so far. The data and correlations behind each factor is enough to determine that these factors should be primary considerations when you’re working on your website.

As SEO changes, we’ll update this list to reflect the most accurate representation of Google’s ranking factors.

Good luck out there — and happy ranking!

byChris Zook on July 6, 2015
Chris is a Content Marketer with a passion for writing, SEO, and being a ginger. You can follow him on Twitter @czook_webfx.

I apologize for the late response. We currently do not publish the weight of each ranking factor.

The reason is because some factors are weighted VERY heavily (like title tags and responsive design), but once you get into the tiny details (repeat visitors, time on site, etc.), it’s more difficult to say how much of an impact they have.

Those tiny details are much harder to test over a credible sample of active websites, and few credible resources (if any) can reliably prove their strength.

Hope that helps!

http://www.argyletryit.com Dirk Argyle

Thanks

http://niksto.com/ Nikolay Stoyanov

Hey Chris! Really nice article. I have noticed that you mentioned LSI keywords. Do you think that Google will change their policy on LSI keywords if SEO experts continue using them as a way to cheat the system and rank higher? My personal opinion is that they will remain relevant because they provide natural sounding to the text. What is your personal view on it?